Philadelphia Fans Cheer A Catch That Robs Raul Ibanez Of A Home Run. Wait, What?!?!?!?

But please, GQ, keep telling us how Philadelphia Phillies fans are the worst fans in the country.

Eagles Week 9 Recap: Eagles Win Game, Refs Win Money

• The Vegas point spread in the game was Eagles favored by 3.  The Eagles won by 2.  Carl Cheffers has to be absolutely giddy about that, for 2 of his ticky-tack calls wiped out 2 Colt turnovers in drives that would ultimately end with an Indianapolis touchdown.
• Michael Vick certainly adds a dynamic to the Eagles that Kevin Kolb does not.  I like Kolb, but at this point, Michael Vick is the man for the Eagles.  Andy Reid is going with a merit system, and based on that, he is right with going with Vick.  He is in win-now mode, and with the NFC as bad as it is, I can't say that I blame him.  Before, I did.  But this putrid NFC changes everything.  It also helps that Kolb did get to play in a few games after all because of Vick's injury.
• The question of the future now.  You can't keep both QBs next season, so do you work out a new contract with Vick and trade Kolb, or let Vick walk and keep Kolb?  At this point, I would say extend Vick and trade Kolb, but, that is something that could change multiple times as the season nears a conclusion.  
• Coming into this game, the Eagles were 11-0 in the game after the bye week under Andy Reid, while Peyton Manning was 3-0 all time against the Eagles, in games that were not even close.  The more impressive streak held up.  Eagles are now 12-0 after the bye week, the longest such streak in NFL history.
• Before this game, Peyton Manning had been sacked 7 times all season.  The Eagles got him twice tonight.
• Before this game, Peyton Manning threw 2 INTs all season.  The Eagles, more specifically, Asante Samuel, intercepted him twice tonight.
• The Eagles 1st 4 red zone possessions resulted in 1 TD and 3 FGs.  For all the talk about the refs that you will see below, if they lost that game, that would have been the reason.  When facing Peyton Manning, touchdowns are imperative in red zone situations.  The Eagles were seemingly the better team all night long, and it should not have been as close as it was.  After all, the Colts had over 40 seconds at the end of the game to drive into field goal range and kick a game-winning field goal.  Luckily, Manning overthrows and an Asante Samuel interception prevented that.
• Ellis Hobbs was injured this week and did not play.  2 weeks ago, he was the guy who got beat  time and time again by Kenny Britt.  In his plate this week was Dimitri Patterson who had a fantastic game against a fantastic opposition.  Patterson was not beaten for the big play at all, something Ellis Hobbs has not been able to boast.  If Andy Reid makes Patterson a regular starting CB alongside Asante Samuel, I would be quite happy.  From what I've seen, Dimitri Patterson is a better cornerback than Ellis Hobbs.  Sure Patterson allowed lots of underneath completions, but in comparison to the deep completions given up by Ellis Hobbs on an alarmingly consistent basis, I'll take it.
• There were positives and negatives for Sean McDermott tonight.  The positives:  He beat Peyton Manning, something that Jim Johnson never did.  Also, his defense held Manning and the Colts offense to 7 points in the 2nd half, very impressive.  The negatives:  After the Collie hit, Sean McDermott kept calling plays and blitzes that were not working, allowing the Colts 10 easy points in the final 2:23 of the first half. 
• DeSean Jackson played his first game in 3 weeks after suffering a severe concussion.  If he missed a step, it sure as hell did not look it.
• Michael Vick played his first game since the start of the Redskins game 5 weeks ago.  If he missed a step, it sure as hell did not look it.
  
• I will use the next 3 bullets to address 3 things of importance that need to be said.  First of all, what happened to Austin Collie was an extremely scary incident.  Thankfully, reports indicate that Austin Collie is all right.  You never want to hear that a player has a concussion, but in this case, that is sort of good news, as the worst was definitely feared, especially seeing what happened to that Rutgers player a few weeks ago.  However, that hit on Collie was called a penalty, and a penalty it was not.  Before you get up and arms about this, learn the NFL rules.  Because if you think I'm wrong, then you don't know the NFL rules.  Once a player catches and establishes possession of the ball, as Austin Collie clearly did, the receiver can no longer be declared "defenseless."  Here is a description of the play, per Matt Mosley "Eagles safety Quintin Mikell unloaded on Collie after he appeared to make a catch with 2:23 left in the first half. Mikell led with his shoulder and it appeared to be a clean hit as he made contact with Collie, who then pin-balled into Eagles rookie safety Kurt Coleman. After watching several replays, I'm not sure how Coleman could have avoided the helmet-to-helmet contact, which appeared to cause Collie's injury."  Here's the video.  The catch was made and Collie established possession.  The receiver was not defenseless.  Therefore, there is no hit on the defenseless receiver, even though they called the penalty on Mikell, and not Coleman, the guy who administered the concussion-causing blow.  In situations like that, the helmet-to-helmet is not a penalty.  Unfortunate things can happen on perfectly clean plays. This is one of those situations.  Like it or not, Mikell's hit and Coleman's hit were clean football plays.  What has been stated above are not opinions.  They are facts.
• This is the explanation Carl Cheffers gave of his call. "Well, if he is completing the catch, his second foot is not down yet or it's just down, we still give the defenseless receiver protection. So if it is a bang-bang type play, with his second foot coming down, he still gets protection on that play. The fact of the matter is, is that ball was incomplete. So, he has protection throughout that entire process on that play because we don't even have a completion -- at no time did he have possession and become a runner to where he would have transitioned out of being a defenseless receiver."  If the mumbling and the jibbersih seem familiar, well, it should.
• Now whether or not it should or should not be a suspension has no bearing on whether it will be suspended.  Knowing Goddell, it will be suspended.  Les Bowen said it best, "This is Mr. Goodell's NFL: Guy is hurt, so it must be a penalty."  Given all that has happening, Goodell will damn the rules of football straight to hell and fine and/or suspend Quintin Mikell and/or Kurt Coleman for no valid reason.  And that's a shame.
• And lastly, a big hullaballo is being made of Eagles fans booing while Collie was motionless.  Let's set one thing straight.  They were booing the OFFICIAL.  They were not booing Austin Collie.  They were booing one of the WORST CALLS OF THE SEASON.  They were not booing a motionless man.  They were booing an INCOMPETENT OFFICIATING JOB.  They were not booing a guy who needed to be stretchered off the field.  They were booing the fact THE REFEREE COST THE EAGLES A FUMBLE RECOVERY.  They were CHEERING when Austin Collie was being wheeled off the field.  Wait, what?  That doesn't follow the script!  I challenge you to find another crowd in the NFL that would not have reacted in the same way.  Donovan McNabb got a standing ovation 5 weeks ago when he returned to Philly for the first time.  Why is that being forgotten about now?
• And lastly, the win probability chart. (advancednflstats.com)

A Lesson To Those Who Think They Can't Make An Impact On The Internet

May I present the power of having a few Twitter followers who have a bajillion more followers than I do.

In a fit of rage on Twitter, someone types the now deleted tweet: "Hey Philly, screw you and your homophobic, battery-throwing, smoke-bomb tossing, Santa Claus-booing fans," minutes after tweeting yet another now deleted tweet about how satisfied she would be: "If some sort of hilarious, season ending illness befell every Phillie," I respond to her with a "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" and a snide "All Philly fans in a nutshell," and the next thing I know, practically ever Philly sports fan I follow is completely bashing her into smitherines. Read at your own risk. (FYI, this is the smoke-bomb incident she was referring to)

What had happened was after I tweeted it, someone with a lot of followers who follows me also retweeted it, which prompted more retweeting from people with followers and the next thing you know, some reasonably anonymous NoCal and USC fan is a trending topic in Philadelphia. While I obviously had no intention of it becoming a huge deal square in the middle of Game 2 of the NLCS, I can't say that I did not revel in the hilarity of it. If you are going to go on a place like Twitter and spew out the tired generalizations about Philly fans that everyone and their mother is sick and tired of (never mind that the Santa Claus booing was over 40 years ago) on top of calling us homophobes (never mind that Philadelphia is for the most part a politically liberal city), and I am going to re-tweet it to point out the patheticness of it, and if it gets picked up by people with more followers than I have, then be prepared to feel the wrath of your stupidity. To her credit, she did not fire back with thousands of insults, she did apologize, over and over again, and she did seem to take it in stride (although she did delete her controversial tweets), but suffice to say, I think the lesson has been learned.

Now for those wondering how on earth I got to be following said Giants fan, well, she is 49er16's friend and a year or so ago he told me to follow her.

/DUCKS

Think you can't make an impact on the internet? Think again.

Results Of The All Important Philadelphia Ratings Battle: Eagles Pull Great Numbers; Phillies Triumph Anyway

A fun sub-plot of last night's Philadelphia games was who would win the local TV ratings. For fans of both teams, it was something to discuss and debate. Well, the results are win and the results are surprising. NBC football game versus a Phillies playoff game that's not must win, on some cable channel. Not only did the Phillies surprisingly edge out the Eagles, but both pulled some overwhelmingly amazing numbers. From myfoxphilly.com

But the big x-factor is the number of people who constantly used a remote control to watch both games, or had access to several TV sets.

Many people we talked to found a way to watch both games, which started in the 8 o’clock hour for Philadelphia viewers.
In preliminary numbers, which will be updated later Monday, the Phillies had 834,000 viewers of all ages while the Eagles had 741,000 viewers.

The majority of TV sets in the Philadelphia viewing area were watching one of the two games Sunday night.

In the key demographic group of adults 25 to 54 targeted by advertisers, the Phillies had a rating of 19.7 compared with an 18.1 for the Eagles.

Helping matters was the fact that both games were close and the Eagles ratings went up 6 points after the final out in the Phillies game.

Both the Eagles and the Phillies did stunningly well last night, with the Phillies doing slightly better than the Eagles. Think about this fact: More people watched Sunday Night Football last night more in Philadelphia than in any other individual city, and yet, it still was not the highest rated program in the city! While another story completely, Sunday Night Football killed nationally, beating the Phillies game by 200%.

If this proves anything about Philadelphia, it is this. Today, Philadelphia is not a baseball town. Philadelphia is not a football town. Philadelphia is a sports town.

The Latest Weird Philly Fan Moment Caught On Camera: Little Girl Picks And Eats Booger

Philly fans have done it all this season. Off camera they have thrown up on little girls. 3 idiots have run onto the field sparking 3 high profile incidents, one of which made international headlines when Philly police tasered the kid, little kids have been caught drinking out of beer bottles, and now the latest. I present to you: little girl picks and eats booger!



Disgusting.

As far as the game went, the Phillies 11-game win streak was snapped, the magic number to clinch the NL East is still at 2, and the magic number to clinch the playoffs is still at 1. I am hosting the NFL live blog tomorrow, though from 1:35 to at least 4:05, my attention will be focused almost all on the baseball games, switching to football only at commercial.

Does The Simon Gagne Trade Justify Deserting The Flyers?

With the events leading up to the Simon Gagne trade and the actual trade itself, talks have begun about deserting Flyers fandom. Homer is an incompetent moron, yes, but his incompetence is causing people to want to leave Flyers Fandom, desert the team, boycott the team until Homer is fired, etc. As you may remember, such talks revolved around the Eagles when they did not re-sign Dawkins last off-season, when the Eagles signed Michael Vick last pre-season, and as mentioned, Homer has driven some people to that edge with this off-season.

And once again I find myself needing to re-iterate I do not think completely deserting a team over off-season moves is ever justified. That’s not to suggest that some people won’t get away from the sport and the team over time, that happens, but to go from completely supporting the team to no longer supporting the team over 1 move and/or a string of moves in a single off-season is ridiculous for me. When the Eagles signed Vick, James Craven decided to “boycott” the Eagles over it, did not watch a single Eagles game last year, and will not watch one until Vick is off the team. To me, something like that is completely ridiculous. Not every move a team we support makes is going to be a good move, but when the bad ones or the controversial ones come along, that does not mean one should forget about them completely.

Another thing about boycotting and/or deserting the Flyers is that it takes you away from the other players on the team that you love. Now whether or not the Flyers are a better team now than they were in June can be a point of great contention, but this still is a talented team with Pronger, Timonen, Richards, Giroux, Leino, JVR, Lappy, Betts, Briere, Carbomb, etc. Just because Homer backed himself into a corner and traded Gagne to get himself out of it, does not mean you should give a big “fuck you” to the entire organization, which would extend to the above players who at some point or another last year we grew to really love watching.

That being said, I think there is room for 2nd team fandom. I know that not every sports fan believes in this, but personally I always find room for 2nd teams, especially when Philly teams are out of it. That is not to say it can or has to take anything away from one’s Flyers fandom, but supporting an additional team, especially one like Tampa Bay (though the cities have had pretty interesting relationships in sports this past decade) where there aren’t any harsh feelings, isn’t out of bounds. The Hurricanes were my 2nd team in the Eastern Conference for the past decade or so (Brindy FTW!), and now that team is Tampa Bay. It does not take away from my Flyers support, it does not take away from reveling in the Flyers achievements past and present and future, it does not take away the pain of being so close in 2004, but it gives me another team to be happy for when they succeed. And I truly believe this Tampa team will be a force to be reckoned with this coming season.

6ABC Sets The Record For Most Middle Fingers Seen In One Shot During A Soccer Match

I am guessing that some Toronto FC fans were acting up or doing some provocative things as those middle fingers are not directed toward the field of play.

And while the TFC fans may have been living and successfully getting on the nerves of the least impressive crowd at PPL Park to date after TFC tied it up late in the game, the Union fans would be the ones with the last laugh after the Union were rewarded a penalty kick in stoppage time for a TFC handball in the box. Sebastian Le Toux proceeded to show Asamoah Gyan how it is done and the Union came away with a 2-1 victory.

ESPN Uses LeBron James Coverage To Take A Cheap Shot At Philadelphia Sports Fans

As if you needed another reason to hate ESPN, right? Sometime during the LeBron-a-thon, ESPN aired a video package which took a not-so-veiled cheap shot at Philadelphia fans. Not only do they cross sports for the cheap shot, but display an utter ignorance of Philadelphia sports culture. Check it out for yourself. (Hat tip to The 700 Level on Twitter



"It's the reason they never turned on him, unlike other cities who turned on their sports stars." - ESPN voiceover lady while showing a picture of McNabb.

I will say this simply, I will be direct, and I won't mince words. If you want to mistake a vocal minority of Philadelphia fans displaying their passion by booing sports stars who are paid lots of money to meet expectations and subsequently fail to meet them as an entire city turning on a player, then quite simply, you can go fuck yourself.

We Start 'Em Early In Philly

You can check out my Game 5 recap in the post below this one, but I just could not let the night pass without posting this hilarious video from this afternoon's Phillies broadcast. If you ever wondered how some Philly fans decide to throw batteries at J.D. Drew, vomit on 11-year olds, and run onto the field and get tased, well, this may provide us with some sort of an answer. After all, if you were a toddler who drank beer, you would turn out the same way too, right?



I have no recollection of this, but my parents tell me that they would feed me alcohol as a kid before plane rides so that I could fall asleep easier. But I don't think they were prepping that kid for a plane ride. I mean that kid was downing that shit like the beer bottle was his Mommy's breast and there was some tasty ass milk inside. When he goes to a Phillies game in 17 years and intentionally vomits on a newborn, I think we can all look back on this moment as the turning point in his life.

(Hat tip to The Fightins)

Philly Fans Serenade The Habs With "Ole" Chants

Flyers fans at Game 1 at the Wachovia Center started 2 buzz-worthy chants, one of which is just plain dumb, the other which might be my favorite moment in sports chanting ever.

The dumb: Chanting "USA! USA! USA!" This is not the Olympics. This is not the USA vs. Canada, it is a club team from Philadelphia versus a club team from Montreal. Just because one club is from the United States and the other Canada, does not mean it is USA vs. Canada. After all, what on earth does chanting "USA! USA! USA!" do when the team you are supporting is more Canadian than the opposition who plays their home games in Canada? In fact, not only do the Flyers have more Canadians than the Canadiens, but they were the most Canadian team of the 16 teams to qualify for the playoffs. As far as Americans go, while the amount on the current roster is the same (4), the Canadians actually played more American players last night than the Flyers did. And I am not even sure what to call what happened with the Flyers fans and that CBC truck.

The brillant: "OLE, OLE OLE OLE, OLE, OLE! OLE, OLE OLE OLE, OLE, OLE! OLE, OLE OLE OLE, OLE, OLE!"



This live video was filmed during a stoppage in play, but for those who did not see the game, the "OLE" mocking was very prevalent throughout the 2nd half of Game 1.

All I will say is that is seriously epic and whomever started it is a genius. And how are Habs fans going to retaliate anyway? By mocking us? Okay, fine. But if they do, they might want to think about what their options are, as it seems like there is hardly an option that does not benefit the Flyers and/or make the Hab fans look like complete asses. Their options:

1. Chant "LET'S GO FLYERS" and clap 5 times.
2. Chant "CROSBY SUCKS".
3. Introduce everyone to the PECOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO POWER PLAY
4. Require every adult to vomit on the nearest child at regular 30 minute intervals.
5. Have security tase every fan who makes unnecessary advancements to get closer to the ice.
6. Speak English.
7. Publicly denounce the existence of Santa Claus.
8. Give Danny Briere a round of applause for choosing to sign with the Flyers even though the Habs offered him more money.
9. Jump in the penalty box and try to fight Dan Carcillo.

I just put Down Goes Brown to shame, didn't I?

A Truer Portrait Of Philadelphia Sports Fans

People will talk about a pair of idiots running onto the field and getting tasered (in addition to Santa Claus and Irvin) in talking about Philly fans, but somehow, in future discussions about us, I am thinking this video will be left out of those discussions.



Presented without further comment.

Don't Tase Me, Bro!

Interesting occurrence at last night's Phillies game. Somehow a 17-year old moron found his way onto the baseball field last night at Citizens Bank Park. After a brief chase around the outfield, the cops finally corralled him and took him away in handcuffs. Just how were they able to get him in handcuffs? They tased him!



You want to be a dumbass and run onto the field like that? Then you deserve every bit of that tasing and the subsequent laughter that comes from the internets when the videos get posted all over YouTube. Good times last night at Citizens Bank Park...........good times.

Fun Things Everyone Should Try At A Ballpark: Making A Great Foul Ball Catch

With all the bad publicity that is sure to be given to Phillies fans because of VomitGate, I figured it would be nice to show a change of pace to show a much more positive video. Here's a video from last night's Nationals-Phillies game (1 day after VomitGate happened) of a Phillies fan making a tremendous foul ball catch and giving the ball to his son.



So why did a seemingly random video of an albeit terrific foul ball catch by a fan end up on YouTube with over 2,000 views in less than 24 hours? That's Drexel University professor and Philadelphia Phillies blogger David S. Cohen. For those not familiar, Cohen is one of the blog managers of SB Nation's (yep, SB Nation again) The Good Phight. As soon as he posted that vid of his experience, it spread quickly throughout the blogosphere (about as quickly as VomitGate did). So congrats to David on that fine catch and I am sure his son now has a baseball memory that will last a lifetime.

Fun Things Everyone Should Try At A Ballpark: Intentionally Vomiting On An 11-year Old Girl

While I sort of danced around this point in the last post through way-too-easy jokes about bandwagon Caps fans, it holds more water in this much more serious offensive fan post: one drunken moron does not a fan base represent. I may have had some fun making fun of a Caps fan who got caught on Canadian national TV for harmlessly pantomiming the moon, but this bit of fan unruliness from the Nationals-Phillies game on Wednesday night is really a toss up between one of the following: despicable act at a stadium or most despicable act at a stadium.

Meet Phillies "fan" Matthew Clemens. His idea of a good time? Going to a Phillies game, shouting constant vulgarities, drinking way too much, and intentionally vomiting on an 11-year old girl. Wait, was that last one?

I hope Mr. Clemens has a heck of a good time in jail. Seriously......what on earth is running through your mind, even at levels of epic intoxication, that make you think, "oh, I think I will stick my finger down my throat and vomit on this 11-year old girl."

As far as the vulgarities and lots of alcohol go, I think you can expect that just about anywhere. I will make a point crystal clear that people in the mainstream media will likely fail to get: Matthew Clemens is a jerk, a dumbass, a doofus, and a douche bag all wrapped into one. Philadelphia fans are not Matthew Clemens.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I will now announce my plan to go to Yankees Stadium this weekend and urinate on a toddler. Who's with me?

(Hat tip to Big League Stew and NBC Philadelphia)

Philadelphia Sports Fans Add Another To Their Bad Reputation

And you thought it was bad when they booed Santa Claus.

This morning at Wing Bowl XVIII, they took it too far. Now the Wing Bowl, for those belligerently uninformed on Philadelphia customs, is a yearly wing-eating contest every year before the Super Bowl, consisting debauchery inside the Wachovia Center on a Friday morning equitable to 10 times worse than anything you ever got at The Vet's 700 Level. That being said, there are certain lines of decent morality that should not be crossed. They were crossed today when Philly fans committed what will no doubt go down as their worst act of douchebaggery yet: They booed Snooki.


Satire aside, THAT. WAS. AWESOME! How often do you get to see a stuck-up "guidette" (MTV's word, not mine) walk into an arena and get booed out of the building like that. Now I watch more reality TV more than anything sports fan on the face of this earth (Survivor, Amazing Race, and Hell's Kitchen are my favorites) but even I can tell you that Jersey Shore is crap. Actually, I have never been so proud of Philly fans in my life. If there is one thing we do, we recognize crap for what it truly is, crap.

However, Snooki did not go quietly into the night. She was interviewed by Fox29 on the booing and she had a little salute to everyone.



I saw that for the first time and nearly pissed my pants from laughing so hard. It does not get much better or funnier than that.

As evidenced by the booing, I can confidently state that Philadelphia feels the exact same way about you, Snooki.


Philly has no love for Snooki (PerezHilton.com)
Snooki doesn't like to get booed (Seriously? OMG! WTF?)

Famous Phillies Fan And Daughter Receive Odd, Unexpected Surprise

Sorry that I could not get this to you sooner, but even though I only have one class today, I have been helping out with Constitution Day all day and really this is the first time that I've been able to breakaway, if only for a few minutes.

I mentioned yesterday, that I would try to find the video of the famous Phillies fan and daughter who threw away her daddy's first ever foul ball. Well, here it is.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I figured that someone had recovered that ball and turned it in. Oh well, it still is cute to watch and is something that I'm sure neither Steve nor Emily will ever forget.

If Only We Saw More Stories Like This In Baseball

For all the chastising of general idiocy that goes on around here, sometimes it's nice and rather refreshing to post something a little on the heart-warming side such as this video. Such is the case with this story making national headlines of the Phillies fans the other night. In the bottom of the 5th inning of Tuesday night's game against the Nationals, Jayson Werth hit a foul ball that was caught in the stands by a lifelong Phillies fan named Steve Monforto who was attending the game with his 3-year old daughter. Monforto did what any normal fan would do after making a foul grab and he gave the ball to his little girl to hold. Only she did not exactly do that. Instead, she threw the ball away over the railing, thinking she was innocently playing a game of catch. Afterward, instead of yelling at his daughter for throwing the foul ball away (Monforto has been going to Phillies games all his life and this was his first foul ball), he had a smile on his face and gave her a big hug, and all of a sudden, he is now relishing 15 minutes of fame. Here's the link to the original video from CSN Philly courtesy of MLB.com and below is an interview Monforto did with MSNBC earlier today.



So great and fun to see, it really truly is. Both Steve and Emily will be appearing on the Today Show tomorrow, September 17, where supposedly both Steve and his daughter, Emily, will receive some sort of surprise. If it is posted online, I'll try to get the video of that up as soon as I possibly can.

Stop The Madness!!!

Late Saturday night, 49er16 sent me an email regarding the tragic death of David Sale, who as I'm sure you all know by now, was beaten to death outside of a bar connected to Citizens Bank Park. I intentionally did not talk about it for I did not want to get into the rant that I knew I was going to get into if I talked about it. However, the media firestorm that has come from this has driven me to a point where I can no longer be quiet about this. The madness must stop.

Because of a reputation, based mostly on things that happened in the last century, the tragic death of David Sale is being blamed on Philly sports fans and the sports culture here in general. Yeah, hard to believe, I know. Something bad happens at one of our ballparks and it's because of the "hooliganism" in Philadelphia that caused this to happen.

Why can't you people wake up? Why are you such hypocrites? Do you honestly think this only happens in Philadelphia? If so, please, go back to Kindergarten for that is where your intelligence level is right about now.

You are quick to prosecute us yet you are too blind to see the other headlines that the media conveinently hides from you. For what kind of a story is it that a Los Angeles Angels fan was killed while leaving the stadium earlier this year? Folks in Los Angeles are not like that. They are not hooligans, criminals, and thus like Philadelphians are. They are cool, laid back, surfer dudes. All of them. Hooliganism does not exist in Los Angeles. No, not at all.

And what about the 03 shooting of a Dodgers fan by a Giants fan? Surely, it must have been some sort of freak accident. There is no other logical explanation. I mean, after all, sports fans out west are all laid back surfer-dudes. You can't blame this on a sports euphoria that exists all over the world, including California. No, this kind of stuff can only happen in Philadelphia for sports hooliganism lives only there. No where else in the world. Just Philadelphia.

Okay, enough of the absurd sarcasm and more to the straight facts. I'm not trying to trivialize anything having to do with the deaths. They were very tragic indeed as. You can't trivialize a mother losing her son and a sister losing her brother for good. But a point needs to be made to shut up some people of the mainstream media (*cough*cough*Colin Cowherd*cough*cough, who even went as far as to essentially say our school system sucks; yeah, um, that explains why some of the nations finest universities are in the city of Philadelphia) who are as thick-headed as I depicted them to be with the above sarcasm about the 2 real deaths that occured. I don't take pleasure in doing this. I'd rather take John Gonzalez's advice and focus more on what really happened, as in an innocent kid died way too young, and not argue about this, but the mainstream douche bags have driven me to it.

Let's take a look at David Sale's murderers. Just to save time for me as I have a live blog to get to in 30 minutes, I'll quote the above linked Gonzalez column. You'll find the emphasis of the point is still there.

Three men - 28-year-old Francis Kirchner, 35-year-old Charles Bowers, and 45-year-old James Groves - have been charged with murder. In 1995, Bowers was sentenced to six to 23 months for stabbing a man four times. In 2006, Kirchner had to undergo court-ordered anger-management counseling after he and some associates broke a man's cheekbone. If history is any indication, these are not nice people.

Face it, these are not sports thugs. These are thugs thugs. These guys would be considered thugs in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Baton Rouge, Anchorage, where have you. So why are we blaming this on a sports culture?

The answer is shockingly simple: it's our portrayal in the media. Whether we like it or not or we want to admit it or not, everything in the media is a continuance of some story and the media only covers what they see think will garner them the most ratings. Let's face facts, Philly fans do have a reputation. We did cheer when Michael Irving was wheeled off a football fan for the last time, and we did boo Santa Claus (I have a major gripe with this story as well and how it's been portrayed, but that's another rant for another time). But given the reputation of Philly fans, which makes a better, more interesting story for the media to cover? A bunch of thugs beating up a guy outside of a bar that just so happens to be outside of Citizens Bank Park? Or a San Francisco Giants fan killing a Los Angeles Dodgers fan in a stadium parking lot? The Philly thugs, of course. Even though the 03 Giants incident is to an infinite power more of a sports crime and a bigger example of sports hooliganism, hey, Philly has the more interesting media story because of our reputation, therefore, that's a bigger story. And while the Giants fan may have gotten his headlines back then, was everyone blaming that on the horrible obnoxious sports culture in San Francisco?

People frequently claim that sports hooliganism, if you will, only takes place in Philly. Now I assume that most of you have been around sports long enough to know what I am saying is more than true, but still, the point needs to be made. Every professional sports team is going to have their people! Yes, even Philadelphia. I'm not here claiming that Philly fans are angels of the sports world or something, but give me a break here. Drunkeness occurs at any and all sporting events. There are always guys who just can't limit themselves to a beer or 2 to enjoy the game with and go way overboard and in turn get nasty, obnoxious, and in some cases, violent. That can happen anywhere in the country. Scratch that, that does happen everywhere in the country. Because let's face it, it's human nature for that to happen. During sporting events people want to party and when people party they tend to drink alcohol, in some cases lots of it. And when the human body has too much alcohol, especially in a person obnoxious when he is sober, you know things are going to be taken to the next level. The level that was reached in that parking lot in 2003 and the level that was reached outside of Citizens Bank Park last Saturday. It does not matter if we're in Philadelphia, Los Angeles or Kalamazoo, THIS STUFF HAPPENS! GET USED TO IT AND STOP PIN-POINTING OUR CITY AS THE ASSHOLE SPORTS CITY OF THE COUNTRY WHEN MUCH WORSE HAS HAPPENED ELSEWHERE!!!!!!!!!! OH, AND COLIN, HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA AND DREXEL UNIVERSITY?!?!?!?!?!? Sigh....why do I even waste my breath on someone who the best thing most people can say about him is that he is a skidmark on the underwear of life?

However, in the grand context of it all, none of this stuff even matters, now does it? Who cares about Colin Cowherd and what happened in what sports city? Someone way too young died a death that he did not deserve to die.

RIP David Sale.